Checkerboard Cake

Just for fun, I bought a checkerboard cake pan for around $13 (including shipping) from eBay and took a shot at making one of these intricate cakes.  

Some pictures taken along the way are shown below, as well as the final result, which, while not perfect, still tasted quite delicious.

The pan is actually three pans with one plastic divider (shown below inside one of the pans).

We prepared one box of Betty Crocker Super Moist Butter Recipe Yellow cake mix, according to the instructions on the box.  It calls for three eggs, water and vegetable oil.

Next we prepared one box of Betty Crocker Super Moist Butter Recipe Chocolate cake mix, also following the instructions, which called for three eggs, water and vegetable oil.

The batter goes in the bottom and top layer exactly the same, while the the batter in the middle layer is just the opposite.

In our case, we chose to put the chocolate in the center and in the outer ring for the bottom and top layers of the cake.  The only place the yellow batter goes in those layers is in the middle ring.  

For the actual middle layer of the cake, we put the yellow batter in the center and outer rings and the chocolate in the middle ring only.       

The picture on the right is of the bottom layer.

Notice the messy fingers!

We learned along the way to put each different color batter in a large zip lock bag and then cut out one tip so both colors of batter can be placed inside their proper rings as neatly as possible.

Since we were learning along the way, I would say that it took around 20 minutes to get all the batter into the pans in the proper places.

When it was done this is what the pans looked like.   

At this point it was time to put them into the oven.

The recipe for the yellow cake called for a slightly different amount of cooking time than the chocolate cake.  Fortunately, they both called for the same oven temperature.

We decided to bake them for 35 minutes, which was a time that was in the range called for by the cooking instructions for both cakes.         

Once the pans were out of the oven we let them cool for around an hour.

We decided to keep things simple and made a basic homemade chocolate icing with confectioners sugar, cocoa, milk, vanilla and a bit of salt.

 The picture on the right was taken right after the big "reveal." 

What was revealed was a checkerboard cake that was far from perfect, but I can assure you that it tasted delicious!

The slice of cake below was devoured minutes after the picture was taken!

Return from checkerboard cake to the cakes A to L page.

Go To home page.